


Old Ravens (Are Not So Easy to Fool)

by DeductionIsKey



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang is a Main Character But He Comes In Later, Avatar!Zuko, F/M, Gen, Ozai’s A+ Parenting, Zuko Probably Needs Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 18:25:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16728591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeductionIsKey/pseuds/DeductionIsKey
Summary: He was Prince Zuko, son of Prince Ozai and Lady Ursa, a firebender. He didn’t wish for the skies, and he hated the smooth feel of water bending with his will. He hated Air Nomads, and all their customs. The sky bisons were furry wastes for space, the pacifist routes they followed solved no one’s problems. He was glad they were all gone. He was.None of that was true.





	Old Ravens (Are Not So Easy to Fool)

“If you whisper, they can’t hear you. But if you make a mistake, if you trip and fall as you whisper the secrets, their secrets, they turn and look. They don’t expect you to think, to know. To breathe into the night sky and just feel, with your whole heart, your whole soul. Dreams only come to those who wish for something more, beyond them. Fantastical delusions that spin around their minds like cotton puffs, weaving a world where you don’t have to exist. Where you don’t have to cry. Where everything's fine, where you’re just a firebender, and don’t have voices in your head or yearn for the skies, where Mother isn’t gone and your father thinks you’re actually good enough.

Silly Zuko.

You’re _nothing_ to him.

-

“The world didn’t use to be like this.” Something curled and crawled into his ear, rasping stories that no one dares utter now.

No. That’s not true.

The Nation fought good and true. The Nation loves us, loves me. _Father_ loves me.

(Deep inside, a mind apart from his own always rages and chokes back tears when his teacher teaches Zuko more ‘facts’ about his great nation’s history.

The Air Nomads had never had any armies. They had been defenceless. And now? They were all _dead._

Aren’t I dead?

Where am I?

Gyatso?

Why is it so _coldcoldcold_ ** _cold_ **?

Zuko screamed.)

-

When Zuko had been born, the Fire Sages had looked at him, at his exhausted mother, and pronounced him a firebender to the impatient Fire Prince Ozai. Zuko had glittering gold eyes, that burned with him while he cried. A firebender indeed. The new prince was returned to his mother and father and the Fire Sages went on their way.

But wait, something wasn’t right. If Ozai had looked, if Ursa had glanced at that group of old, old men, maybe one of them would have seen the fire in their eyes. Those eyes had seen it all, and the oldest of them had even been at Fire Lord Azulon’s birth. He had seen him grow, seen his innocent eyes burn into those of a deadly monster, killing men, women and children until the dye in his clothes weren’t the only reason his clothes were red.

He was tired of the bloodshed. Tired of seeing the age limit for joining the army go lower and lower, until mere children walked into those red rivers and heard those screams.

Maybe one day that Fire Sage might tell the others what he had seen in those young one’s eyes. The blue spark that had spiralled round and round the newborn’s pupils, the strange echo that followed his first cries. Maybe one day he might march to the throne room and confess of his sin of dishonesty, toward the crown and his nation, confess his traitorous act. But until the screams, the deaths, the _blood_ stopped, that day would never come.

When that man died a mere two years later, his secret died with him.

After all, he was Kaja’s son.

-

Ursa woke to the smell of burning cloth. The smoke glided up her nose in a lazy assault of her senses, and after her mind abandoned the drowsy in her eyes, she sat up in alarm. In the corner of her hearing, whimpers came to her ears.

Zuko?

She rushed out of bed and threw open the door to her small son’s room. There he was, the centre of the smoke, curled into himself in a big King-sized bed, his face wet with tears even as he clenched his eyes in his sleep. And with a start, Ursa realized.

Her baby was having a nightmare.

With a distressed sigh, Ursa reached out to shake him gently.

_Hiss-_

A small cry aroused from her lips, one she couldn’t quite keep silent. Since when had touching Zuko _burned_ her?

Her cry had caused her son to shift in his sleep, and drowsily open his eyes. Ursa quickly moved to reassure him, prepared to open her arms and hug him, love him-

“Ta Min? Is that you? Ta Min, where are we?” That voice..

This was not Zuko.

The voice which spoke from her son’s mouth was gravelly and so very weary. Alarm surrounded her son’s features as this spirit used his face, stretched and wore his muscles.

Her son (was it?) grasped her arm fearfully, forcefully, with the strength his tiny arms shouldn’t have. His eyes looked deep into her eyes, older then any she’d ever seen. The desperation that counted the spirit’s tone spoke deep tones to her, begging her to understand the urgency of this imagined situation. “We have to leave, Ta Min. We have to go to the Palace. You don’t know what Sozin is planning, he tried to kill me last night! The volcano, the lava, I couldn’t stop it! He left me, my old friend, my- my..” A cry of despair and Zuko (or rather _Roku)_ fell back to sleep.

That night, with Ozai sleeping by her side, Ursa griped herself tightly, until her fingers were red with pressure and her figure was curled into herself.

And then, silently (she mustn't wake Ozai, quiet, _quiet_ ) she cried. 

(If Ozai, that vile monster with demons in his gullet and rage in his heart, had woken up on that dreadful night, if he had leaned into his wife and listened _closely, closely,_ maybe he would have heard her cries. Maybe, just maybe, he would have asked the cause.

And maybe, just maybe, Ursa would have told him. Told him that their son was the Avatar, that she had just held her grandfather in her hands and listened to him speak through their son’s mouth. Maybe, if Ozai had been lucky, if he had been a decent man, Ursa would have trusted him, as a wife, and as a mother.

But Ozai was the monster that hid underneath her children’s beds at night, the cause of the cruelty behind Azula’s eyes, and the desperation behind Zuko’s.

So Ursa just cried. For herself, for her children, for _Zuko_

And Ozai, slept on.)

-

“After a long, harsh battle with our great Firelord Azulon, Avatar Wei’s forces retreated cowardly into the Northern Water Tribe’s encampments, and with great tactical strength, Firelord Azulon pursued him.”

Wrong.

_(It was cold._

_Paralyzing, chilling ice surrounded him. It was dark._

_Where was Mommy?_

_There was noise outside, cracks and thumps. He could hear Uncle Aki outside. He wanted to go to Uncle, his head hurt. There were voices, he didn’t like them, could Mommy make them go away? Maybe he should ask Uncle?_

_“Where is the Avatar, savage? Tell me, maybe I won’t burn your entire city to the ground! Maybe-” What was that crack? “I’ll let-” More grunting, was that his uncle? “You live!”_

_“Never!”_

_The cracking of something hitting the floor of the igloo they were in. Wei peaked his head out of the box to take a peek. The ice was red, the snow was red, where was Uncle, where was Mommy, make the voices stop whispering, make the bad men go away, stop, stop, stop!_

_“Something’s in there, Commander.”_

_“Open it.”_

_The lifting of the lid of the icebox his uncle had told him to hid in. Quick! Grab the corners, push them down, don’t let the bad men find you!_

_“We found him!”_

_Wei screamed.)_

Zuko raised his hand. His head, pounded and pounded, his whole body, electric. He had to ask.  He had to _know_.

“How old was Avatar Wei when he died?”

The tutor pursed her lips. “That, Prince Zuko, was never specified in Prince Azulon’s war texts. I would suggest you ask him yourself.” A nervous smile. She knew, all the scholars did. No one spoke of the missing scroll, that lay deep in the vaults for no one to find. That spoke of the real battle that day. That told of the disposing of Avatar Wei’s body, the wiping out of the Northern Water Tribe with no Avatar left to protect them.

(After class, Zuko had excused himself to the restroom, his stomach rolling. He knew, just as she did, the real age of that ‘unconquerable foe’ of Firelord Azulon. Knew the true story of that battle which brought so much honour to the Fire Nation.

Zuko couldn’t see what honour could be wrought from the death of a child barely four summers old.)

-

_“Name the most recent full-cycle of ‘Fire-Air-Water-Earth’ Avatars, up to the present day.”_

Avatar Roku, the Air Nomad, Avatar Wei, and then Avatar Dingxiang.

_(“His name was Aang.”)_

_-_

“Fire is fueled by anger, and rage. Your inner flame is a show of your passion for our great Nation. Fire is death, and destruction.”

( _Green, blue, yellow, arcs of fire surrounded him. He was on a dragon, the wind in his hair. Peace filled the clouds, and silence hummed its own happy tune. Gently, his arms let go of the dragon’s fur and, slowly, gracefully traced another arc._

_A circle of fire burst from his palm. His dragon, powerful and strong, roared, the noise echoing into the rippling fire._

_How could death and destruction be so beautiful?)_

_-_

Zuko loved flying.

The air underneath his glider, bending and spirilling to his will, curling both lazily and with such excitement it gave him a rush. He loved the feeling of being in control of his every action, loved talking with his dearest friend.

Gyatso. (Friend, father, mentor, jokester. It all blurred.)

“I know not what to do with Sozin, Gyatso.” He was in an Air Temple, leaning against a stone-cold window, his brow troubled. Next to him, Gyatso, robbed in traditional Air Nomad garments, stood. Outside, the night sky, sown with stars that radiated deep cloths of beauty, shown.

“Sozin was your dear friend for the better part of two decades, Roku. The kind of connection does not seem for naught. Appeal to him, you may still end this quarrel tastefully.”

A bitter sigh. “I fear your Nomadic advice is not applicable to this situation, Gyatso. Something tells me that a simple discussion will not resolve this. Something deeper than broken kinship is at work here.”

(Something darker _was_ poisoning Sozin’s heart. A lust for power, for blood, soaked his organs and decayed his arteries, replaced every cell in his body, until the man Roku knew, the man who had laughed and quarreled with him, was not the man who left his burnt husk on the volcano that night.)

Faraway in the stables, underneath the temple, a sky bison roared.

And Zuko (Roku?) woke up.

-

(He was Prince Zuko, son of Prince Ozai and Lady Ursa, a _firebender._ He hated Air Nomads, and all their customs. The sky bisons were furry wastes for space, the pacifist routes they followed solved no one’s problems. He was glad they were all gone. He was.

None of that was true.)

-

“You must know the pain of losing your only son!”

Azula always lies.

(This time though, Zuko knew she wasn’t lying.)

Father was going to kill him. Lu Ten was dead, Uncle Iroh was a coward, and he was going to die.

His eyes shut tight. Mother would fix this. He wouldn’t die. Father wouldn’t kill his only son! He loved him!

Later, Zuko would think and wonder if he had noticed part of himself wasn’t even a little bit surprised by his father’s plans.

-

Mother was gone.

(Like Gyatso, and Uncle Aki, and all the Air Nomads, all gone, all _dead_.)

  
All he could do was curl up underneath the covers, and wish himself to not be so _cold_.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I recently got back into the ATLA fandom and thought I’d try my hand at something a bit hard to work with. This will probably be about 2 or 3 parts, but you can let me know if you want it longer! ^.^ Comments and Kudos bring my days up!


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